Yes I know, very late to say.
But why change the base game so much?
I've played from the original Elite to Oo 1.80.
Stopped there as I didn't think it was the same game anymore.

Do you really think that making it more 'realistic', 'complicated'. Makes it more fun?

Here's how I thought of Oo1.65
Think of the Ooniverse as a Lego flat plate of infinite size and your Cobra as a 4 bit brick stuck on an edge. (Ye, an edge to infinity)
With all the extras as they were, Addons. Extra bricks. The possibilities were endless.
That is how I got hooked a second time.
As time goes some developers were welding bricks to the flat plate!

I don't say that the base game couldn't run faster or be smaller. But changing the play? Remember it would play on a 64K machine. Imagine that with the graphics cards of today.
But the same game.
Still prefer the addons. They were easier to change with help from players in here.

But what do I know.
I just like to play the game.

Heaps of thanks to all the Commanders that made the game possible.

Huge rassberries to them that weld bricks on.

Didn't know where to post this, And seeing as it was to do with past development, well.

_________________LOOK OUT!!!OOPS.."Press Space" Commander
If you do not see "Press Space" more often than you want.. Your not trying!

Yes I am aware of that.
Playing the game and changing the game are like chalk and cheese to me.
So every time developers change the base. I get a bitty lost for a while.

My only/main peeve was the way markets were handled. I didn't want realistic markets. How easy would it have been to set in system markets to random?
That would be fun. Not knowing what to expect from extra dockables.
Planet landing done it well. Sometimes good, sometimes waste of fuel, sometimes 'Nothing to trade'.
Good game play.

And yes I know 82 and 84 are well going. But base changing the markets.
Not why I play Oolite.

I play to make my ship the best and have heaps of fun with the different types of ships and character players can I fly as. Think, An elite pirate in an asp, or a Jamison in an Iron ass CobraMK3. How could that happen with the markets of limited profits and diminishing milk run returns.
I don't need an Economy lesson. Just an open ended fun game.

_________________LOOK OUT!!!OOPS.."Press Space" Commander
If you do not see "Press Space" more often than you want.. Your not trying!

As far as I can recall, what was changed in 1.82 with regards to the markets was the Javascript interface used to describe them, not the way they worked. This was a necessary change in order to provide complete liberty to scripters to do whatever they wanted with them and their goods. Market OXPs that did not use the new interface had initially some problems with markets. Those were addressed by their authors in good time and right now almost all, if not all of them, have adjusted to the new script interface and work fine. Not sure about limited profit and diminishing milk run returns, are you sure there are no OXPs involved in this? As for Economy lessons, no, there is no such thing or intention whatsoever from within the core game. If you run the latest version of the game with the latest version of your preferred OXPs, I believe you will find the markets being pretty much like you remember them (unless of course the OXPs' logic has changed as well in the meantime, but we do not have any control over this).

If you still think this is not the case, please provide specific examples describing how it used to be and how it differs to that now. This will have to be done without any OXPs installed, if you want to compare core changes.

Apart from markets, is there anything else that you feel has changed for the worst?

I went back through the commit history and it looks like there was two alternative rock hermit types added at some point, both with their own market modifications: rockhermit-chaotic and rockhermit-pirate. The idea was that they are quite rare and offer interesting and potentially profitable deals. I would say that their rarity does not justify the assessment that the "markets were changed" as a whole. Still have not found any primary market operational modifications.

1. Market capacity for rock hermits 127 -> 32/15. Then again, one can save at any hermit.
2. New market definition that basically removed the markets from most old oxp stations. This affects anyone using any old oxps providing secondary stations.

Some seem to like these changes, few seem to dislike them. I like them, for what it's worth . In any case, anything can be "fixed" by OXPing.